


Scorched

by Spiria



Category: Tales of Legendia
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-29
Updated: 2015-01-29
Packaged: 2018-03-09 13:55:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 516
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3252281
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Spiria/pseuds/Spiria
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Five times Walter was cold and one time he wasn't.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Scorched

**Author's Note:**

> Dedicated to Dana, who gave me the prompt indicated in the summary over a year ago. I'm that slow.

One of the earlier times he was truly cold, he had taken a dive in the lake in the village. The embrace of the majestic sea was sad, angry, and melancholy all at once, and the burdensome stillness of the water bogged down his energetic strokes. But there, far beneath the heavy sloshing of the mournful sea, was the slightest touch of something warmer that prompted Walter to stop and tread the water.

His mother had died shortly after childbirth, and his father was reticent. Walter never quite came to understand Nerifes' gentle touch, which mirrored a parent aching with relief for their living son.

 

The village had been razed to the ground, left to nothing but ashes ripe for the soil's taking. Walter and a few of his neighbors straggled through the woods, all of them with a great lack of resources and hope, until exhaustion claimed them for the night.

Without the comfort of a secure roof and a warm blanket, Walter's teeth chattered in his fitful sleep. He woke up sore from hours of having fought the urge to shiver for heat: It would have been a display of vulnerability that his kin, in their most despondent state, deserved not to witness.

 

The next time he took a dive, Walter was embracing the Ferines child who'd been set alight and throwing them both in the water. The fire extinguished with a muffled hiss, and a soft blue glow overtook the once red and now mangled face of the sobbing child. There would be no salvaging of the permanent damage.

Walter grimaced from the sinking realization that the child would grow up with half a face. Just then, Nerifes churned with righteous fury, and the water was almost unbearably cold.

 

After the war, Walter did not pay Stella's grave a visit. Shirley did not question his distance, although he would answer with ease if she asked. He wished to be confronted, if only so he could stop caging the frigid rage in his chest whenever Senel and company fell into his peripherals. He would never understand why Shirley condoned Senel coming within any sort of close proximity to Stella; what he did understand, however, was that he would always be putting on the cold front and the trademark scowl to hide away the pains and aches of an unjust sacrifice.

 

The one time Walter was not cold, it was from the blood beating through his taut figure as he dug Fenimore's grave. Dirt clumped under his fingernails and messed his hands more than years of training had ever done to them. His outward numbness was betrayed by the ferocity with which he made the hole, then how gently he lowered the body into the pit. Inside, Walter was far too warm and bordering on scorching from how cold Fenimore's corpse was.

Walter felt very much alive. After all, Fenimore was very much dead.

 

As he lay there before Senel, he felt cold death snaking through his consciousness. It pulled him down, past the blazing heat of his angry and grief-stricken heart, to freezing oblivion.


End file.
